Marvel ends SEGA partnership

It has been confirmed that there are no plans for further Marvel-inspired games to be published by SEGA.

TQ Jefferson, Marvel’s Vice President of Games Production, shared such news during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, SEGA having been previously responsible for developing game adaptations based upon Iron Man, Thor: God of Thunder and Captain America: Super Soldier.

“There are no current plans for additional Marvel games to be published by SEGA”, Jefferson stated, ahead of the next Marvel film, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. “We just launched Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook; which is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the first in a much larger effort to support the Avengers franchise across not just one but multiple video game touch points.

“The Avengers are bigger than just one game, and we’re planning to allow consumers to enjoy The Avengers regardless of their preference in gameplay style or platform. Look for more announcements in the weeks to come”.

Jefferson further explained his belief that games based upon movies often lead to poor consumer experiences due to the fact that movie plots often don’t lend themselves well to how games are often structured.

“In my opinion, the biggest afflictions affecting movie-licensed games is the amount of development time and a strict adherence to retelling the story of the film in the form of a game. The former is easy to understand – less development time means less time to design, produce and polish the game, resulting in a poor or lesser-quality experience”, Jefferson soundly explained.

“The latter is a little more subtle, but I can sum it up thusly: If a development team were to follow a film’s plot line to the letter, then you would have a two-hour experience with a bunch of thugs and one boss fight. That’s simply not how we define ‘movie licensed console game,’ now or ever.

“In order to hit the expected amount of gameplay, you need to embellish, add additional characters, story, subplots and objectives to make a more robust and satisfying experience. That’s where a lot of movie licenses fall down – lack of content”.

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